This is a cool effect that can make any background (especially brushed metal) instantly more impressive. (If you haven't completed the brushed metal tutorial its a good idea to check it out first here
Difficulty Level - Beginner
Software Requirements - Adobe Photoshop 6 or higher
| Okay, open the background image that you want to apply the rust to. Here, I used brushed metal (see my brushed metal tutorial here.) Press D to set your foreground colour to their defaults, and press Control + Backspace (Mac - Command + Delete)
to fill your selection with white (your background colour). Now, go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and use these settings |
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| Now, go to Filter > Stylize > Emboss and use these settings. This will form our basic rust. |
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| Now, this doesnt look much like rust. Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and check the Colorize box to change the colour. If you want to see the settings I used, click here. This should give you a nice rusty colour, and the whole
thing should begin looking a little more realistic. |
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| For the next step, we need to add a layer mask to our rust layer. Click the Layer Mask button in the layers palette (Illustrated Right). Also, now is a good time to name our layers 'Rust' and 'Background'. |
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| Now to make our rust blend in with our background. First, in the layers palette, set the layer blend mode to Overlay. Now, (remember you have a layer mask applied), go to Filter > Render > Clouds. This masks off part of the rust layer so only some is visible, making it seem realistic on the background. You may have to run
this filter a couple of times to get the right effect, to repeat a filter, you can use the keyboard shortcut Control + F (Mac - Command + F). |
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| Here I applied the rust effect to a cog, to demonstrate how you could use it. (Incidentally, I'll be adding a cog tutorial soon.) Hope you enjoyed this tutorial, if you have any feedback, I'd be happy to hear from you at b3ns0n@msn.com
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